Rev. Preus presented this paper at the annual Free
Conference in Chicago on the week after Easter this past April. This Free
Conference is sponsored by the Association of
Confessional Lutherans and the Luther
Academy. We appreciate Rev. Preus making this paper available for us to
share.
I received my invitation to speak to you today with mixed feelings. On the
one hand, I was honored to be asked to speak on the enduring relevance of the
doctrine of justification. On the other hand, I was a little daunted by the
subtitle that the Rev. Fehrmann gave to my essay which is, and I quote from
his letter of November 3, 2000,
Why the Lutheran confessors divided the Western church over this
teaching; why this doctrine is the only source of assurance of personal
salvation and perseverance in the faith, why the doctrine of justification
is the only instrument for changing bad attitudes in human hearts and
therefore the only foundation for praiseworthy motives and true good works;
why this doctrine continues to cause division in the Christian Church.
I thought to myself, "Well that’s great, maybe John would like to
write the paper for me while he’s at it." It sounds like the title of a
book written by a 19th Century German theologian. Now Norwegians
are somewhat different than Germans. Among the Germans, the ability to
categorize, analyze, synthesize, and write long compound sentences, will most
likely get you where you want to go. In the Missouri Synod you won’t get a
position at the seminary if you don’t have a doctor’s degree. In the
Norwegian Synod you won’t get a position at the seminary if you do have a
doctor’s degree. Call it a vestige of Pietism. Among the Norwegians it is
bad to be overeducated. The Germans of course can’t understand this.
Perhaps I can explain it. Even as God is incomprehensible, that is, not
comprised of a number of attributes that when combined become his essence,
likewise theology is also simple as to its essence. Theologians can construct
systems, of course, and they can make distinctions between different parts of
theology. In fact, they love to do this. But truth is essentially simple.
Error is what is complicated.
The simple truth, the foundational truth, of Christian theology is the
blood of Jesus shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. I think that this is
obvious. It leaps off the pages of the Bible. It is the center of the drama of
Christ’s passion. It flows into Christ’s institution of the office of the
ministry and literally creates the church from which his ministers are born
and which they are to serve. It is the very heart of St. Paul’s theology. It
grounds sacramental theology in Christ’s atonement where it belongs and from
which it cannot be severed. Baptism reveals, as Luther’s hymns puts it,
"the wonders of his precious blood" and by so doing assures us of
God’s own pardon. And, of course, it is the essence of the Sacrament of the
Altar that tells us in what specific manner Jesus wants us to remember him,
namely, as he sheds his blood for us for the forgiveness of sins. This is
simple.
Jesus said, "Given and shed for you for the remission of sins."
St. Paul said, "being justified freely by His grace through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24) and being
"justified by His blood" (Romans 5:9). The meaning is the same. It
has always been the same. This is why God clothed Adam and Eve – covering
their shame – with the skins of animals whose blood was shed. This is why
Abel offered a bloody sacrifice. This is why God provided a ram to be offered
on Moriah instead of Isaac. This is why God required so much shedding of blood
in the worship of his Old Testament Church. This is why the angels witnessed
the sprinkling of blood on the Mercy Seat. And this is also the only place
where theology can be relevant. If the blood and righteousness of Jesus are
not relevant, the Christian faith is not only irrelevant: it is absurd. Unless
justification is the illuminating truth through which every other topic of
theology must be seen, theology itself will become not only irrelevant, but
downright harmful as well.
This has to do with the nature of God and the nature of man. The whole
theological enterprise faces a major problem at the outset. God wants to talk
about himself while we want to talk about ourselves. Only when we are talking
about the justification of sinners by the blood of Jesus do both kinds of
talking take place at the same time. The only way theology can be relevant to
man is if it is centered in where God and man are joined together. This is
only where the blood of Jesus is given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.
This point of contact between God and man is where all Christian theology
must focus if it is to have any relevance at all to Christians. The heart of
all Christian theology is the very same as the point of contact between God
and man. This is what we are saying when we say that justification is the
chief topic of Christian doctrine. We mean more than that this article is the
touchstone by which we determine whether we have correctly understood all
other articles. We mean that theology is personal. All theology must flow into
and out of where God imputes Christ’s righteousness to the sinner and the
sinner receives this forgiveness through faith. Where this faith is born the
theologian is born and this is where the theological task is permanently
anchored. There is no other legitimate orientation for theology than the care
of the soul burdened by sin, death, doubt, fear, and the wrath of God. The
heart of theology must hit the heart of man or it is irrelevant. The doctrine
of justification is relevant precisely because it hits our heart. Furthermore,
if theology or "God talk" is to remain relevant, it must always be
talk about how God and man are reconciled. If it is not, it will deteriorate
into either academic speculation or moral posturing.
Let me make my point crystal clear. The central article of the faith is not
the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is not the doctrine of the incarnation of
the Son of God. It is not the doctrine of the sacramental presence of Christ
among us. It is not the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the
mystical union, baptismal regeneration, or the real presence of Christ’s
body and blood in the Lord’s Supper or anywhere else for that matter. The
central article of the faith is the justification of the sinner by grace for
Christ’s sake through faith. I am talking about forensic justification. God
renders a verdict upon us. On the basis of the active and passive obedience of
his incarnate Son offered up vicariously for us, God tells us that we are
righteous and that makes it so.
If theology is to be relevant, it must talk about the individual who is
engaged in the talk. Nobody wants to talk about a theology that doesn’t
involve him. This is why the heart of theology must hit the heart of man. If
you won’t meet the needs of his sinful heart with the doctrine of
justification, the void will be filled with something else than God’s
doctrine. We are by nature incurably works-righteous and legalistic. So
naturally, theology that relates to man will be works-righteous and legalistic
theology. Moralism is always relevant. The more godless things become in our
country, the more relevant moralistic, legalistic, work-righteousness will
become. It relates to people. It touches their hearts. You ask the average
person what kind of doctrine is "relevant" to his life, and it will
likely be a teaching on how he may do, perform, achieve, or accomplish a
particular moral good. If the doctrine doesn’t yield moral improvement, it
does not relate and is not relevant.
This legalistic impulse is stronger than our will to resist.
Self-justification does not flow from holding formally to an incorrect
doctrinal formulation as if we could prevent it from occurring by holding to
the correct doctrinal formulation. It flows rather from what the Formula of
Concord calls the "deep, wicked, abominable, bottomless, inscrutable, and
inexpressible corruption of [our] entire nature in all its powers, especially
of the highest and foremost powers of the soul in mind, heart, and will."
(FC SD I 11) This means that theology will always be perverted to serve the
carnal will of the theologian. You can count on it. It is a false dream to
assume that one can construct a doctrinal formulation that will somehow keep
theology from being perverted. Doctrine will always be turned into a
legalistic defense of carnal pride and a legalistic weapon of spiritual
tyranny. This is what sinners do to God’s word.
The theological enterprise would be different if we were angels. Perhaps if
we weren’t burdened by our own sin, we could change the focus of theology to
something a bit more elevated than the bitter sufferings and death of God’s
Son. Perhaps theology could then be focused upon the essence and the energies
of God, or on the Trinitarian nature of all theological truth, or on the
implications of the personal union for the full deification of the Christian
through his participation in the Lord’s Supper, or maybe even on the
beatific vision itself. I suppose there are many more pleasant things to
ponder than Christ’s bloody sacrifice to appease God’s burning wrath.
There are more noble human aspirations than to be a poor, miserable sinner.
God has more to say to us than the words that absolve us. He has more to give
to us than the righteousness of Christ. Perhaps we could focus elsewhere than
on our sin, Christ’s blood, and forensic justification.
If we were angels or if we were in heaven. But we are neither, and so the
only way doctrine can be relevant is if it relates to us where we live. And
since our heart is unbearably wicked, if theology were to be centered inside
of our heart, it would of necessity become the occasion for idolatry. But
theology must hit our heart or we just won’t care about it. It must hit our
heart. It must go to our heart. It must penetrate our heart. But the very
essence or center of our theology cannot be located within us. As soon as it
is it becomes perverted.
It is at this point that evangelical Lutheran theology faces its fiercest
criticism from all sides. The classic Roman Catholic criticism is that our
doctrine of justification is a legal fiction that has God saying we are
righteous even though we are not. What could be more irrelevant than a legal
fiction, a theology that exists only in a false abstraction? Thus they call
our doctrine "merely" forensic as if it is only words and not
reality. The Eastern Orthodox argue in a similar fashion. They claim that our
"merely" forensic doctrine of justification ignores the deeper
christological essence of Christianity and binds the Christian truth to an
essentially negative paradigm. Jesus becomes merely the solution to our
problem. They are quite critical of our "merely" forensic doctrine
of justification.
What can we make of this "merely forensic" criticism of the
Lutheran doctrine of justification? Whenever anyone uses the word
"merely" to describe forensic justification, as if there is anything
"mere" about the word of God that tells me I am righteous, I would
like to remind such a person of how utterly impossible it is for an enemy of
God to do theology. God talk must be relational. It must involve a personal
relationship. Our personal relationship with God is established by God when he
tells us that we are just or righteous. This is how he justifies us. He tells
us that Christ Jesus died for us and that for his sake our sins are forgiven
and righteousness and eternal life are given to us. God talks and so it is.
There can be nothing "mere" about God talking. God said, "Let
there be light!" What happened? Oh, well that was a mere word! Just a
verbal thing! I see! So the light that lightened the world before the sun was
created was just a verbal fiction? Was it only a pretend or "what
if" kind of light? What lunacy! (No pun intended.) Forensic justification
effects what it says because God’s word is almighty.
Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. So says St.
Paul. Any doctrine that is "relevant" to natural man must needs be a
distorted, demonic doctrine designed to salve the flesh with lies. This is why
we must let God relate his teaching to us where he relates himself to us and
that is where he applies the blood of Jesus to us and penetrates our hearts
with his word of grace. The fact that we are involved here in a life and death
battle against the father of lies and murderer of souls should be sufficient
motivation for us to keep the doctrine of justification pure from any
admixture of human reasoning. This means that the theological task is a
serious business. It is too serious to be left to theoreticians and academics.
Theological abstractions can be useful only as a shorthand means of
communicating between theologians. Theology in its proper sense, however, can
never be abstract. It is always concrete and personal. Why, we could even say
it is existential! It penetrates into my soul and it conquers my heart and it
raises me from death and it provides for me the truth that makes me free and
keeps me free.
This is what evangelical Lutheran theology does.
There is nothing wrong with putting our Lutheran doctrine into so called
scholastic terms with all of the various categories of thought this involves.
This is not really a bad idea and can be very useful in teaching God’s word.
What we may not do is to conceive of theology as an academic discipline that
may be divorced from the actual care of souls.
When we insist on the relevance of the doctrine of justification we are
saying that God relates to us as he teaches us. He does not relate to us in
any other way than by teaching us. There is something strange about the notion
that Christian doctrine can be gotten right as one activity and then shared
with others as another activity. Doctrine is a verbal noun. It begins as a
verb and becomes a noun by derivation. God teaches us his holy word. This
teaching is called doctrine. This teaching is always directed to us as sinners
redeemed by Christ’s blood and absolved in Christ’s resurrection from the
dead. This teaching is always God’s almighty word. This teaching always
conveys to us the Teacher. Even to conceive of Christian doctrine as an
abstract system of religious or spiritual truths is to ignore the very heart
of Christian doctrine and turn it into the plaything of
"professional" theologians who need not be bothered with the care of
souls. The notion that the theological task is something in which only
professional theologians may be engaged is the Protestant version of
sacerdotalism. The people of God are warned away from the theological task
until they have passed a test. God talk becomes captive to the academy,
college, or seminary. Joe and Jane Christian are shut out.
Theology is not theology in the Lutheran sense if it is not relating God to
man. We live on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Lutheran
theology views the pure doctrine as the medicine for the soul of every
Christian. To disconnect theology as an academic work from theology as the
care of souls is to distort its very essence. Dogmatic theology is practical
theology. Dogma relates God to man. It is God relating to man. The doctrine of
justification is the means by which God relates to us throughout our lives.
This doctrine is not relevant because someone who is a communications
specialist has made it so. It is not relevant because a minister with good
interpersonal skills has learned how to relate it. It is relevant because this
doctrine is how and when and where God comes to us in love and reveals himself
to be our gracious Father so that we may embrace him in faith and rest
confident in his love. It is relevant because it relates God to us in the only
way we can know him. We cannot know him apart from him teaching us his
heavenly doctrine. To deny the essentially relational character of all
Christian doctrine is to set up a dead orthodoxy which is no orthodoxy at all.
This caricature of orthodoxy, which we may call the orthodoxist approach to
theology, views doctrine as a tool that must be supplemented with
professionally acquired skills so that it may be used properly to relate to
the needs of people. The tool must be sharp, accurate, and of excellent
quality. But a tool is only as good as the skill of the one who is using it.
And so we have "expert" theologians who must also learn how to
relate that theology to real people in their real needs. The doctrine of
justification is the key component in this system of pure doctrine that serves
as the tool of the skilled practitioner of the theological trade. This is why
the pure doctrine is so important to the orthodoxist. He cannot use an
inferior tool and be expected to do a good job. In this orthodoxist approach,
the theologian must learn and accept this pure doctrine which becomes for him
the beginning of the theological task. After getting the doctrine right and
placing justification at its center, the theologian is ready to make it
relevant to people in their needs. And these are two distinct tasks. First you
get your theology straight. You learn the various topics of theology, how they
all hang together, and why you must firmly maintain every article that you
have learned. But, of course, the pure doctrine is not enough. It is only a
tool, albeit a vitally important one, for the professional minister. He must
also become adept at various administrative tasks, interpersonal skills,
homiletical fluency, and so forth.
The living voice of God is thus turned into a set of doctrinal abstractions
that must be supplemented by various skills. Doctrine serves an essentially
legal function for the professional minister who looks to the creeds and
confessions of the church only when he wants to check on his own work to see
if he is doing anything that needs correcting. The Lutheran minister who takes
the orthodoxist approach doesn’t look to the Lutheran Confessions to receive
spiritual sustenance and nurture from his fathers in the faith, but simply to
show him if and when his ideas, practices, or methods run afoul of the
doctrinal standards. But since he has already learned the doctrinal rules, he
need not constantly refer back to the rulebook.
The orthodoxist approach takes theology away from those to whom it belongs.
It also makes orthodoxy a human achievement and an occasion for boasting. The
so-called Wauwautosa theologian, J. P. Koehler recognized this in his day. He
criticized what he called "the bravado of orthodoxy" in which
"intellectualism" makes comprehension more important than faith.
(The Wauwautosa Theology, Vol. II, pages 237ff) The Wauwautosa theologians
criticized the "repeat after me" theology of their day and sought to
approach the Scriptures anew and reinvent the Lutheran doctrinal wheel as it
were. It would be an irony indeed if some of the less fortunate formulations
of the Wauwautosa theologians were made into a test of orthodoxy for Lutherans
one hundred years later. While they certainly had a valid criticism of what
they called "fathers’ theology" it is naïve to assume that any
generation of Christians can avoid parroting the fathers.
And there is nothing wrong with parroting the fathers. There is nothing
wrong with talking as we have been taught to talk. God teaches us his doctrine
through men and women who learned how to talk from others and if we dismiss
them with disrespect we will surely dismiss the teaching as well. The solution
to the orthodoxist approach is not to retreat one inch from either our
doctrine or the sound formulations of it offered by the fathers. It is
certainly not to approach the biblical text all alone without the sound
direction of the Lutheran Confessions. It is to regard the theological task
and the pastoral task to be one and the same.
The orthodoxist approach gives way to the reaction known as gospel
reductionism. The gospel reductionist looks at the orthodoxist preoccupation
with crossing every theological T and dotting every doctrinal I and bemoans
the fact that the gospel itself becomes buried underneath a system of
orthodoxy. They see the self-congratulatory pride that is the orthodoxist
spirit. They see that something is wrong, and they surmise that doctrinal
inflexibility is what is to blame. They argue that since the gospel is really
all that matters, inasmuch as it is what saves us, every other doctrine must
be shown to impinge upon the gospel in some way before it can be imposed upon
the church. When the gospel reductionists at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis a
generation ago were confronted with the demand that they affirm biblical
inerrancy, they sincerely could not see how such a doctrine affected the
gospel of justification. How could a legalistic doctrine dealing with a rigid
correspondence theory of truth that reduces all divine revelation to a list of
human propositions be the foundation for the saving gospel of Jesus Christ?
Unthinkable! They honestly believed that the imposition of biblical inerrancy
from a synodical authority forced the gospel of justification into a
legalistic straightjacket.
A form of gospel reductionism remains popular today. We are told that we
must show how a particular biblical truth relates to the gospel before we
assert it as dogma. The logic appears to go like this. God saves us by his
gospel. All doctrine relates in some way to how God saves us. Therefore if we
cannot demonstrate how a particular article of the faith pertains to the
gospel, we mustn’t insist upon adherence to it. If we do, we are following a
legalistic or scholastic or Reformed hermeneutic instead of respecting the
hermeneutical role of the doctrine of justification in Lutheran theology.
Gospel reductionism of every stripe is simply the sanctification of
unbelief. The God who in talking to us justifies us by Christ’s blood has
many things to say. He says them in the Bible, the book that he wrote. When he
says what he says we don’t need to know how it relates to our justification.
The point is that since God says it, it must relate to us. Since it is from
God and it relates to us it must relate to justification because God relates
to us as he justifies us. This is how he makes us his children. Children
listen to their Father and believe what he says. To assert that the doctrine
of justification is the chief article that relates to every other article of
the faith is true, not because we can demonstrate this by our own theological
systems, but because of the very nature of theology itself. All Christian
theology is talk of or about the God who justifies us. This is how
justification relates every other article of the faith to us.
Must I prove how the ordination of women attacks the doctrine of
justification before I condemn the practice as shameful? Of course not! St.
Paul said it was disgraceful. That settles it. Ah, but you must develop a more
iconic understanding of the ministerial office and demonstrate how the
minister’s maleness has implications for the gospel itself! This will yield
a more evangelical reason for the apostolic injunction against women pastors.
It will make the all male ministerium a gospel mandate rather than a law
prohibition. Thus you will relate the doctrine of justification to the
doctrine of the ministry.
But this is not how justification is relevant. This is the old orthodoxist
opinion that caused the Wauwautosa reaction nearly a century ago and the
gospel reductionist reaction a generation ago. We don’t have to relate
theology to theology. We can leave that up to the Calvinists. They do a far
better job of it than we do anyway. We relate theology to people. That’s
where it relates. It is only in relating theology to people that theology
coheres within itself. It can be no other way.
I am not saying that theology does not relate to itself as an organic
whole. It does. It does so, not as a system in which each part fits neatly
into its proper place, but as a body of doctrine the heart of which is the
justification of the sinner by grace for Christ’s sake through faith. Since
the heart of all theology is also the only possible point of friendly contact
between the holy God and us sinners, the theological enterprise is always
personal. As we look inside ourselves and see what God hates, we may not find
our personal assurance of salvation within ourselves. This is why we must keep
on hearing the pure gospel preached. This is why we must keep on eating the
body and the blood of Jesus given and shed for us for the remission of sins.
This is why when we are faced with doctrinal perversions that displace the
centrality of justification in our doctrine and in our faith we must respond
as Lutherans.
We must not imitate either the Reformed on the left or the Catholics on the
right. We have seen that the doctrine of justification is relevant because the
only possible meeting place between God and man is where the blood of Jesus is
shed. This is what makes Lutheran theology relevant. We have the blood and we
know what the blood is for. The Catholic doctrine is irrelevant because while
they have the blood they don’t know what it is for. The Reformed doctrine is
irrelevant because while they know that the blood is for, they don’t have
it. The Catholics teach a High Church form of Pietism that is more corporate
and sacramental. The Reformed teach a Low Church form of Pietism that is more
personal and informal. Pietism is Pietism, however. They all agree in seeing
the relevance of Christian doctrine in how that doctrine results in the
believer doing good things. The Roman Catholics talk about faith formed by
love. The Eastern Orthodox talk about theosis. Robert Nordlie and Phil Bickel
talk about progressing from the faith that saves to the faith that obeys. It’s
all the same thing.
Pietism locates the center of theology in the authentic experience of faith
within the individual believer. It is rightly concerned about true faith
flowing into true obedience. It makes a cardinal error, however, in setting
out to ensure that this happens. It moves the focus of theology from the
giving of God to the receiving of man. The Lutheran Pietists agreed that God
gives to us the righteousness that avails before him that we receive this
righteousness through faith alone. They refused however to subordinate the
personal faith that receives to the heavenly doctrine that gives. Thus the
pure doctrine of justification gave way to the pure faith of the justified.
The Christ for us gave way to the Christ within us.
Ironically, the concern of the Pietists for the phenomenon of faith and the
certainty of that faith is precisely what leads them into legalism as they
seek out more and more external evidences of the sincerity of the faith. Faith
that looks at faith becomes doubt. It looks within to where the problems are.
Only the faith that looks to Christ can be certain. And Christ, while he lives
in us, does not justify us by what he does in us, but by what he did for us on
the cross and what he gives to us in his gospel and sacraments.
Pietistic Lutherans in America will always fall under the influence of the
prevailing American versions of Reformed theology. This is because they have
already rejected the relevance of the doctrine of justification. They think
this doctrine is relevant primarily in the changed lives that result from it.
Thus they are required to judge the gospel by means of evidence discerned by
the law. Doctrine becomes a legalistic enterprise. For confessional Lutherans,
the doctrinal emphasis has always been the "for us" character of the
gospel which flows into the "to us" nature of the means of grace.
Doctrine is not primarily law. It is gospel. When God teaches us, he gives us
Jesus. And the Lutheran understands this teaching in terms of the means of
grace. Being taught, he is given by God the very righteousness that he needs.
Lutheran theology recognizes that Christ will never really be understood as
being "for us" unless he is given "to us" in the very
clearly identifiable means of salvation: the gospel and the sacraments of
Jesus. And, of course, when the "for us" character of the atonement
flows into the "to us" nature of the means of grace, Christ remains
Immanuel: God with us.
If the doctrine of justification is to relate to us in our need, we must
continually reaffirm sound Lutheran Christology and sacramental theology. A
discussion of the divine attributes of Christ being communicated to his human
nature may appear to be somewhat arcane, but this biblical teaching is vital
as a foundation for the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of
the sacraments. This is not mere quibbling with historic Calvinism. This is
fundamental. Stated simply, there is no God but the God revealed in the flesh
of Jesus. Since the Calvinists insist on locating God apart from Christ’s
flesh, we must emphasize the significance of the communication of the divine
attributes to the human nature of Christ. This is called the personal union.
Christ is one person, indivisible. His human nature shares in all of the
attributes of his divine nature.
The false Christology of the Reformed does great harm to their teaching of
the gospel. They refuse to locate God only where God has chosen to be located.
Thus, their doctrine of justification, which in most aspects of it is quite
sound, will necessarily be set aside, off in a corner somewhere where it
cannot really flow into the preaching and piety of the church. If God can be
found apart from Christ’s flesh, folks will look for him apart from Christ’s
flesh. This is human nature. The Lutheran knows that the doctrine of grace and
justification through faith alone is grounded in and flows out of biblical
Christology. Calvinism, on the other hand, can conceive of Christ’s divinity
apart from his flesh so it must ground its doctrine of grace elsewhere than in
what is accomplished for us in the divine flesh of Christ alone. Such an
anti-incarnational conception requires Calvinism to safeguard the doctrine of
grace by means of their doctrine of God’s "decrees". It doesn’t
work. God’s sovereignty is a rotten foundation for his grace. A sovereign
God cannot bear my sicknesses and carry my sorrows. Only an incarnate God can
do that. The sovereign God is a mean bully that nobody really likes at all.
Because he’s sovereign we’re stuck with him. It’s not as if we can get
away from him. If we could, he wouldn’t be sovereign after all, would he?
But we surely don’t much want to "flee for refuge" to such a God.
And, of course, few people do. This is why Calvinism – despite its clear and
often beautiful expressions of Christ’s atonement and the doctrine of
justification – also breeds legalistic and sectarian opposition.
Arminianism, which rejects the "divine decrees" of Calvin’s God,
is seen as a "kinder and gentler" version of the Protestant faith.
As hostile as it is to historic Calvinism, however, it couldn’t have arisen
without it. And it has never been able to overcome Calvin’s fundamental
error on Christology. Calvin’s rationalistic denial of the so-called genus
maiestaticum (the divine attributes being communicated to Christ’s human
nature) has had incalculably serious consequences for Protestantism. We
Lutherans need to be made aware of these consequences.
The incarnation is where to locate grace because grace is always centered
in Jesus and in his suffering for us. Since the Reformed will put the Son of
God where the man Jesus is not, the mystery of the incarnation cannot relate
to them. It doesn’t flow into the saving mysteries of the here and now,
namely, the pure gospel and sacraments of Christ’s church. For the Reformed,
the incarnation has no immediate practical importance, except perhaps as a
dogma which is logically necessary to the atonement and which must be believed
if one is to be a Christian. When it comes right down to it, Reformed theology
has Jesus absent from his church.
Their bad Christology has dire consequences for Reformed sacramental
theology. Just as God the Son may be present when and where the Son of Man is
absent, so also the gospel and sacraments may be present when and where the
Holy Spirit himself is absent. Since this can be, it will be. There go the
means of grace. They know what Christ’s blood does, but they don’t know
where it is. They cannot depend on the means of grace. Therefore the doctrine
of justification, while true enough, doesn’t relate to them. It is
information. It is not God giving the righteousness of Jesus to sinners
through the means of grace.
Reformed theology has a hard time relating Jesus’ blood and righteousness
to people. That’s not surprising when you consider that Jesus isn’t really
there and the doctrine of the real absence of Christ does tend to make
atonement and justification theology rather irrelevant. So they fall into a
kind of revivalistic type of piety in which they come into contact with Christ’s
blood by means of a dramatic religious encounter. This is often combined with
the rigorous application of relevant principles for Christian living that they
have gleaned from the Holy Scriptures. Whether a strategy for Church Growth,
overcoming financial challenges, empowering wounded healers, teaching men to
keep their promises, or even making an entire synod comprised of over two and
a half million souls functional again, the "spiritual principles"
approach to theology is an effort to bring Christ to bear on problems when
Christ himself, that is, Christ in the flesh, is not available. Of course, the
most prominent feature of the so called Church Growth Movement is the
"spiritual gifts" doctrine that teaches the church will grow as the
individual members discover and use whatever spiritual gifts they have. While
God established the initial contact with you when you came into contact with
the atoning blood of Jesus, this relationship will continue to be strengthened
as you find a certain interior gift and use it to relate to God and to the
church. The "spiritual gifts" doctrine is just another form of
Pietism. When you believe that God is relevant to you primarily by what he
does inside of you instead of what he gives to you, the real point of contact
between God and man is lost and all doctrine is irrelevant. We are left to
discover a relevance by coming up with busy body religious rules for success
and then blaming the Holy Ghost for our own inventions.
As we return to our liturgical and sacramental heritage as Lutherans,
however, it is vital that we do so as Lutherans. The threat from the Reformed
left leaves us without the blood. The threat from the Catholic right is even
more dangerous. It leaves us with blood that doesn’t flow into a forensic
justification and thereby deceives us with false promises. It is bad enough to
have Jesus absent from us so that we must content ourselves with a Holy Spirit
who makes us jump through spiritual hoops in order to relate to God. It is
even worse to have Jesus present with us without hearing him tell us what we
need to hear.
The Catholics have the blood but have never quite figured out what it is
for. Rome denies that God reckons to faith the righteousness of Christ and
thereby justifies the sinner. While they have a fine doctrine of redemption on
paper, it doesn’t inform their doctrine of justification. They have a rich
doctrine of the incarnation. They see the incarnation made manifest in the
sacramental life of the church, indeed they define the church in sacramental
terms. But they have a fatal and incurable bias against the justification of
the sinner being effected by means of God telling the sinner here and now that
his sins really are fully and finally forgiven for Christ’s sake. They won’t
back off of their essentially sanative or transformational model of
justification that has God pronouncing the person righteous on account of the
righteousness that inheres in the individual. So while Rome and the Orthodox
do indeed teach a sacramental presence of Christ the Savior here on earth with
his holy church, they don’t permit Jesus to say what Jesus wants to say.
They have the blood but don’t know what it is for and when we tell them they
insist on changing the subject. The Reformed have their scriptural principles
for Christian living. Rome and the Orthodox have their sacramental presence.
Neither can join the blood shed to those for whom the blood was shed. Neither
can teach a relevant theology without descending into the very same morass of
legalism. And as we have seen, legalism is always very relevant.
I would like to suggest to Lutherans who want to claim our liturgical and
sacramental patrimony that we may only do so as we subordinate every other
doctrinal assertion, theological consideration, and churchly reform to the
task of bringing the atoning blood of Jesus Christ to the individual sinner by
means of the teaching, preaching, and sacramental bestowal of the forgiveness
of sins. We cannot understand the Lutheran teaching on the office of the
ministry or on the sacraments of Christ unless we understand this in relation
to the article on justification and in subordination to it. I know that a
pastor is a minister because God justifies me through the gospel the pastor
preaches and the sacraments he administers. He doesn’t justify me through
the administrative or bureaucratic work of a synodical president who is
ordained or through the loving discipline and teaching of useful skills that
come from the parochial school teacher who is not ordained. This is how I know
that neither a synodical president nor a parochial school teacher is a
minister in the proper sense of that term. Likewise, we must reject any talk
about a sacramental presence of Christ among us that militates against a clear
understanding of forensic justification by the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness to the sinner. The article on justification serves as a
hermeneutical check on all our theology. One side argues in favor of the
priesthood of all believers and the other side argues for a more sacramental
understanding of ordination. I would urge all sides to use justification as
the interpretive principle to understand the ministry, the liturgy, the
sacraments, and everything else so hotly debated among Lutherans today.
Lutherans who want to reconnect with the liturgical life of the historic
church may profitably consider the writings of such theologians as Aidan
Kavanagh and Alexander Schmemann. However, the confessional Lutheran will
subject their contributions to a rigorous test. The centrality of
justification in the body of Christian doctrine and its unique role in God’s
care of the soul requires extraordinary care in applying to Lutheran theology
the liturgical insight of men who reject the Lutheran doctrine of
justification. I am not sure that this has always been done.
We are hearing more and more these days of our Lord’s incarnational and
sacramental presence in the church. Lutherans are telling us that Christ is
present in "the sacramental life of the church." What do they mean
by this? When Rome or the Orthodox speak of the sacramental life of the church
they do so in service to an alien theology that rejects the confessional
Lutheran doctrine of justification. In Roman Catholic theology, the church is
Christ’s sacramental presence in the world. Lutherans don’t talk about the
sacramental life of the church. We talk about the administration of the
sacraments. In this way we keep the focus on the actual bestowal of
forgiveness where God has chosen to give it. When Lutherans start to talk of
Christ’s "real presence" and are not specifically talking about
the sacramental union of Christ’s true body and blood with the elements of
bread and wine they are changing the standard meaning of words. I know what a
Catholic means when he says that Christ is present in the sacramental life of
the church. I don’t know why Lutherans are talking about Christ’s
incarnational presence in the sacramental life of the church. When everything
is sacramental, nothing is sacramental. It’s like the "everyone a
minister" claim. We find that it leaves no one as a minister. For us
Lutherans, the sacraments are powerful means of salvation not because they
ensure Christ’s incarnational or sacramental presence among us, but because
they give us the forgiveness of sins.
God forgives us our sins when we go to the Lord’s Supper. This is the
chief benefit of the Sacrament. This is not what Rome teaches. It is what
Luther’s Small Catechism teaches. Luther asks three questions about the
Sacrament of the Altar: "What is the benefit of such eating and
drinking?" "How can bodily eating and drinking do such great
things?" And, "Who then receives such sacrament worthily?" The
answer to every question is the same, "Given and shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins." Nowhere do you see a clearer connection between the
atonement of Christ then and there to the justification of the sinner here and
now than you see in the Lord’s Supper. We go to the Supper to be justified.
We go to hear Jesus tell us that our sins are forgiven because he died for us.
And should we wonder how serious Jesus is about this declaration of our
justification (so that we are not seduced by the Catholic deceit that this is
a "mere" forensic justification) Jesus graciously puts into our
mouths the same body that bore our sins on the cross and the same blood by
which our sins were forgiven. The Lord’s Supper relates to us because it is
God justifying us. The heart of Christian doctrine meets the heart of the
penitent at the Altar. God justifies us by Christ’s blood. We eat and drink
Christ’s body and blood and thereby can know without any doubt that we are
righteous.
There is nothing wrong with using theological imagery that reflects on the
incarnation of the Son of God and restoration through him to the image of God.
Incarnational terms such as wholeness, wellness, restoration, and so forth are
useful in describing the Christian’s sanctification. Still, we are not
perfectly whole. We will not fully experience the recreation until the
resurrection. But we most certainly are perfectly righteous right now. This is
what the Lutheran doctrine of justification teaches us. When we speak,
therefore, of the Lord’s Supper, we should be teaching the doctrine of the
vicarious atonement of Jesus and the justification of the sinner who receives
by faith the forgiveness of sins won by Christ’s blood. It is theologically
inadequate to talk in terms of an incarnational presence of Jesus in the
sacramental life of the church for the purpose of restoring our fallen image
to wholeness and wellness.
Lex orandi, lex credendi! The way of prayer is the way of faith! This
little truism has become a rallying cry for confessional Lutherans who argue
for retaining the historic liturgy of the church and for purifying our
Lutheran liturgy from some of the Reformed dross that has attaches itself to
it. By getting the liturgical life of the church straightened out, the purity
of the gospel will surely follow. Lex orandi, lex credendi! Yes, but we must
not forget that the historic liturgical churches within the Roman and Orthodox
communions have been wallowing in the mire of legalism for centuries now. The
Bible, not the liturgy, is the norm of Christian doctrine. When we teach the
centrality of justification both as the topic that informs all other topics of
the faith as well as the place where God himself gives himself to faith, we
will love the church’s liturgy because we love the blood and righteousness
of Jesus, the forgiveness of our sins, and the boundless mercy of our Father
in heaven revealed in the bitter passion and death of his beloved Son, Jesus.
Retaining the historic liturgy, having the Supper more frequently, and
inviting the penitent to receive personal absolution of the sins that beset
him must all be done for the purpose of God meeting sinners and absolving them
through the blood of Christ the Lamb of God. Where the paschal blood is
poured, death’s dread angel sheathes the sword! Now I can know the God who
made me. He can relate to me and I to him.
We dare not ward off the Low Church pietism of the left with the High
Church pietism of the right. Either side severs the merits of Christ’s blood
from the personal faith of the Christian. The left does it by denying that
Christ is really present. The right does it by denying that the blood of Jesus
really does take away all of our sin. The left and right both force the
Christian to relate to God by what God does inside of him. Looking for Jesus
in my heart or looking for Jesus in the sacramental life of the church makes
no difference. Corporate pietism is no better than individualistic pietism. In
either case we are looking for the solution where the problem is.
Justification is relevant because we are not righteous in ourselves and yet
we must be righteous or shrink in terror before the holy God. It is relevant
because it is how God relates to us. This doctrine brings us forgiveness of
sins, peace with God, the desire to please God in body and soul, and the
confidence that we are going to heaven some day to see face to face the One
whose righteousness covered us and sheltered us from the moment we were
baptized. The enduring relevance of the doctrine of justification cannot be
expressed any better, I think, than in these words from the hymn, "One
Thing Needful" with which I will close this afternoon.
I have naught, my God to offer,
Save the blood of Thy dear Son;
Graciously accept the proffer:
Make his righteousness mine own.
His holy life gave He, was crucified for me;
His righteousness perfect He now pleads before Thee;
His own robe of righteousness, my highest good,
Shall clothe me in glory, through faith in His blood. (ELH, 182, stanza 6)